Climate change impacts and costs to U.S. electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure

Charles Fant, Brent Boehlert, Kenneth Strzepek, Peter Larsen, Alisa White, Sahil Gulati, Yue Li and Jeremy Martinich

Energy, 2020, vol. 195, issue C

Abstract: This study presents a screening-level analysis of the impacts of climate change on electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure of the U.S. In particular, the model identifies changes in performance and longevity of physical infrastructure such as power poles and transformers, and quantifies these impacts in economic terms. This analysis was evaluated for the contiguous U.S, using five general circulation models (GCMs) under two greenhouse gas emission scenarios, to analyze changes in damage and cost from the baseline period to the end of the century with three different adaptation strategies. Total infrastructure costs were found to rise considerably, with annual climate change expenditures increasing by as much as 25%. The results demonstrate that climate impacts will likely be substantial, though this analysis only captures a portion of the total potential impacts. A proactive adaptation strategy resulted in the expected costs of climate change being reduced by as much as 50% by 2090, compared to a scenario without adaptation. Impacts vary across the contiguous U.S. with the highest impacts in parts of the Southeast and Northwest. Improvements and extensions to this analysis would help better inform climate resiliency policies and utility-level planning for the future.

Keywords: Climate change; Infrastructure; Transmission; Distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220300062
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:195:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220300062

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.116899

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().